Page 14 of Rush of Insanity

“Underwear off,” he demanded, running his hand into her hair, holding her tight.

They shucked the rest of their clothes in between heart-fluttering kisses and gasps for breath. The passion was everything it used to be and more. The heat had increased. The heartache, too.

“Bed. Now.” She couldn’t even hear her words over the blood pulsing through her ears.

He gripped her waist and tugged her closer, evaporating the space between them. She clung to his shoulders as they collapsed onto the mattress in a mass of arms and legs and lips. He fell on top of her, his hard chest pressed deep into hers, his knees nudging her thighs apart.

“This changes nothing.” She wrapped her legs around him and chose to ignore his chuckle.

“Whatever you say, princess.”

She tugged his hair, and he responded with a grind of his hips. The head of his shaft was poised at her entrance. Tempting. Teasing. She wasn’t going to beg. She refused. But the devilish sparkle in his hazel eyes said he already knew how close she was to succumbing.

“Don’t look at me like that.” She turned her head, needing to deny him one last time before she lost the battle.

That’s when the scent filled her nose.Perfume.

Perfume that was plastered to his sheets.

Perfume that wasn’t hers.

Chapter Four

Judd sensedthe moment Harper’s arousal morphed into psychotic outrage.

“You didn’t have the foresight to change the sheets?” she screeched and shrunk his balls with her glare. “I can smell other women in your bed.”

He let her scramble out from beneath him to reach the edge of the mattress before he swung his arm around her waist and dragged her back beneath him. He settled on top of her again, this time pinning her arms above her head. “Let’s discuss this like adults.”

Her eyes widened and she began to thrash. “Get off me, you son of a bitch.”

“Watch your mouth.” He loved her dirty tongue, fantasized about it, hungered for it. Just as much as he loved her angst when he bossed her around. The split second of widened eyes and flared nostrils was akin to a shot of adrenaline…straight into his dick.

“How many women have you had in here, Judd?” She was panting, her gorgeous breasts rising and falling. “I’m supposed to believe you want me back when your sheets smell like something out of the Playboy mansion?”

Three.There’d been exactly three.

The first woman he slept with was out of anger. Mourning. He’d been drunk and angry and looking for an outlet. He wouldn’t even classify the act as sexual. It was too sterile. Merely going through the motions without pleasure or thought.

He was in a better headspace by the second. There were no inhibitors—liquid, powder, or otherwise. He’d been sober. Back to his gentlemanly ways with a shy, polite stranger. And the act was equally loathsome.

The third had quickly followed and was the result of a thought out plan.

When he’d been a teenager, his uncle had caught him smoking while his parents were at work. Punishment came in the form of tough love. His uncle took a seat and demanded Judd keep puffing until vomit spewed from his nose like a garden hose.

It took three cigarettes to eradicate all future curiosity.

It took three women to cement his lack of interest in anyone of the opposite sex other than Harper.

He deliberately slept with the third woman quickly after the second to increase his self-loathing. He strove for the compounded revulsion he’d experience when he smoked those cigarettes, and he succeeded. There hadn’t been another woman since. There was only a stronger pull toward the woman currently beneath him.

“There were a few,” he answered honestly and didn’t enjoy the front row seat to Harper’s jealousy.

She clenched her fists and struggled against his hold. “Well having the scent of whores drifting into my nose has a slightly dampening effect on my libido.” She wiggled, testing his restraint as she inevitably brushed her pubic bone against his shaft. “Get off me.”

“Why? Because you’re pissed I tried to move on?” He lowered his chest onto hers and got in her face. “You’re the one who left me.”

“I don’t appreciate rolling around in the scent of your whores.”

---